


Fight

by jive



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 01:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8512894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jive/pseuds/jive
Summary: They vow to keep fighting.
A drabble done out of grief and frustration.





	

He wakes up with a pain in his stomach, churning and twisting like knives being jabbed into his gut. He remembers the news, the utter anxiety that crippled him in the hours he spent watching the holovid, hoping and hell, even praying, that the outcome would not be as he and so many others feared. He remembers watching, bile rising in his throat the longer the numbers changed, but the results remained the same.

He remembers Jack holding his hand the entire time, fingers interlocked with his own, gripped tight and unwilling to let go like a lifeline. He remembers blinking back the tears and pressing himself into Jack’s warm chest, silence hanging between them but still thankfully louder than the devastating static being spewed from the screen in front of him.

He feels nauseated. Disgusted. Somewhere caught in between wanting to put the barrel of his sidearm between his own teeth or press it against the chests of the people who decided that the lives of he and his loved ones no longer mattered to the world. It’s all he can do to keep himself from screaming, from crying out in utter heartbreak and despair.

Jack wakes up blearily beside him, face taut, grim, and utterly hollowed no doubt mirroring the expression on Gabriel’s own. He offers no apologies, no empty platitudes, because it’s not needed. Gabriel knows it’s not his fault. Jack isn’t to blame for what was decided for the both of them despite how loudly they resisted and revolted through their own words and actions. Jack had been with him every step of the way, fighting at Gabriel’s side with just as much ferocity and determination as he ever did when it came to things that he’d be willing to throw his life down for.

Jack fought too, and Gabriel fought harder.

But they still lost despite it all.

Jack is not at fault; but that doesn’t make the pain hurt any less when Gabriel takes in the sight of those stormy blue eyes and golden hair, and remembers how history has always valued people like Jack far more than they ever valued people like him.

It hurts. It hurts more than Gabriel could ever put into words. The reality that he’s spent so much of his life fighting for people who didn’t even care if he lived or died hits him harder and more profoundly than the war ever did — than how it still does, given how there’s still so much more to go before and end is even close to being in sight.

Jack remains quiet, and offers comfort in the only way he knows can even come close to reaching Gabriel. Mournful and heartbroken, Jack wraps his arms around Gabriel, cradling the back of his head and pressing it into the juncture of his neck while he buries his face into the clammy skin of Gabriel’s own. They spend almost hours like that, holding onto each in one long embrace made of almost inconsolable grief, two grown, battle-hardened super-soldiers clinging desperately to each other like the world could collapse and drag the both of them down into its unforgivingly destructive bowels at any moment.

They don’t recover from their desolation, per se, nor are they able to swallow all of the agonizing sorrow down like a chalky bitter poison that they can only hope takes them away. But they do change it into body armor — Gabriel even goes so far as to transform his righteous anger and despair into ammunition — that will allow them to remain standing as long as possible, to allow them to return fire tenfold, and to not go down without a fight even when the sights and barrels of the world they’re struggling to protect and live in turn and aim at their heads. They let the pain and hurt sink into their hearts and burn into their souls, a constant reminder of something that they should never ever allow themselves to happen again.

They vow to keep fighting.

They vow keep going so that one morning, they can greet the sunrise with victorious tears and scream their triumphs and proofs of existence into the faces of those who made Gabriel Reyes believe his life didn’t matter.

Because it did. It does. And it forever will.

Gabriel won’t allow anyone to tell him any different.


End file.
